August 10-17 Word of the Week: tickle

August 10-17 Word of the Week: tickle

Definition according to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English:

Tickle

tickle n OED ~ sb1 Nfld 'narrow difficult strait' (1770-); DC 1 a, b esp Nfld (1770-); see SEARY 141-2; cp TICKLE a. A narrow salt-water strait, as in an entrance to a harbour or between islands or other land masses, often difficult or treacherous to navigate because of narrowness, tides, etc; a 'settlement' adjoining such a passage; also attrib. Cp REACH, RUN n.

[1770] 1792 CARTWRIGHT i, 64 There is a narrow tickle of twenty yards in width, between this island and the continent; across which a net is fixed, to stop the seals from passing through.

[1770] 1971 SEARY 141 Tickle, in the form Tickles, is first cited in OED in Cook and Lane 1770 [1775] B, repeated in Lane 1773, for a locality at the head of St Mary's Bay.

1792 PULLING MS Aug, p. 29 He had been out in his boat a few weeks before, and rowing through a tickle not far from the cove, he saw a canoe of Indians coming through another tickle and nearly meeting him.

1812 BUCHAN MS 17 July I proceeded thro' the Ladle tickle for New bay and return'd again by dark, from Wards island to the head of New bay must be twenty miles. On the 14th I set out for Halls bay by way of Pretty tickle passage, this is form'd by the Tritons and the projecting heads of Bajer and Seal bay, and the Mainland from the latter to Halls bay.

1837 BLUNT 29 This harbor is very secure, with good anchorage in any part, above the Harbor Rock; it has two Tickles, so called, in Newfoundland, and intended to describe narrow passages between islands and rocks.

1842 JUKES ii, 31 What the origin of this word Tickle may be I am at a loss to conjecture; but it is applied all over Newfoundland to a narrow passage or strait between two islands, or other points of land.

[1870] 1973 KELLY 27 The Captain, seeing that we were in a little difficulty in getting under weigh in the narrow Tickle, kindly sent his men for this purpose.

1876 HOWLEY 19 The word Tickle appears to refer to a narrow channel between two or more islands, or between islands and the mainland, through which the tide runs with considerable force.

1907 DUNCAN 142 'Twas wild enough, wind and sea, beyond the tickle rocks.

1920 GRENFELL & SPALDING 13 We have turned into a 'tickle,' and around the bend ahead of us are a handful of tiny whitewashed cottages clinging to the sides of the rocky shore.

1940 SCAMMELL 9 "The Squid Jiggin' Ground": There's men from the harbour; there's men from the tickle.

1947 TANNER 285 As has been said the tides are of no great size at the Atlantic coast, but they are sufficient to produce strong tidal currents in the archipelagos and channels of different orders: runs, tickles and rattles.

1951 Nfld & Lab Pilot i, 143 [The two islands] are separated from the eastern side of Long island by narrow channels, passable only by boats, and on the shores of which stands a township known as the Tickles. T 50/1-64 There's only a notch comin' in through, you know, when you comes to the tickle, an' if a stranger didn't know nothing about it he'd be liable to run the lighthouse close, see. Ibid An' she got in a tide rip when she got in the shoal tickle in Lewisporte, an' they had like to make a big mess of it. Down she had like to go.

1968 SCHULL 85-6 Nearly four thousand men of the city and the outports, the Tickles and the Guts and the Reaches and the Coves of Newfoundland, were bound to the age-old rendezvous of the ships and the moving ice.

Supplement: tickle n

[1976] 1985 LEHR & BEST (eds) 55 "The Ella M. Rudolph": At five o'clock in the evening through the Tickles she did pass/The threatening of a violent storm was showing by the glass. 1987 FIZZARD 210 'We come in to make Green Island and even if it was very thick we'd have to steer across to Pass Island and there were times I went through that tickle and you'd have a job to see both sides at the same time.'

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The word of the week is released each Sunday morning on the Newfoundland and Labrador CBC Radio program Weekend Arts Magazine with host Angela Antle.